


Parenthetical

by lesyeuxverts



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Communication, First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-04
Updated: 2014-02-04
Packaged: 2018-01-11 05:19:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1169157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesyeuxverts/pseuds/lesyeuxverts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All that they have said has been said in the spaces between them, the gap between their bodies growing ever narrower.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Parenthetical

**Author's Note:**

> Quotes (italicized) are from William Blake, Ruth 1:16, and John Donne.

"Want you…" Sweet words, once dreamed – the dream long since half-forgotten. James would pinch himself, to remind himself that this is real, but…

But he has the comforting strokes of Robbie – too erratic, too almost-short-of-satisfying – too real to be a dream. If the feeling of them like this, together, is too much to be a realistic dream, it must be true.

James shifts to ease the discomfort, lets some of his weight drop down onto his arms. He can feel it all in this stable structure, rocking with each thrust, balanced on his hands and knees. If he'd read physics, he'd be able to write equations that described this. 

If he'd read biology, he'd be able to write off the iron taste of blood in his mouth as nothing more than a cut lip, the iron binding oxygen and the blood reacting. He'd write essays on oxytocin, norepinephrine, epinephrine, a number of things countable and measurable, finite and definite. ( _To see a world in a grain of sand_ …) 

Nothing he has read has prepared him with arguments for or against this, the sweet feeling of Robbie against his skin, the smell of sweat and skin in the air, the press of lips against lips. 

"More," James says, and it does not sound like his voice – and he does not know if he is begging, or what he will do if Robbie denies him. 

And then there is this, the novelty of rough words pressed into the junction of neck and shoulder, the bites sucked into his flesh there. The warmth of Robbie draped across him, afterwards, and the press of his hands – rough calluses and smooth skin both.

They lie in a tangle, the wrinkles of a white duvet spread between and under them. There's a moment when Robbie is looking him straight in the eye, but James ducks his chin and Robbie lets him – allows him, he thinks, a moment of shyness, like a Victorian maiden. (He has never felt less like a Victorian maiden in his life.)

Shyness does not seem to prevent the feeling of warm fingers smoothing paths along his collarbones, across the curve of his back. Robbie touches him without seeming to think about it, without pausing or stopping. 

Later, when his heartbeat has slowed to its resting rate, Robbie's touch slows and stops, one palm pressed to his shoulder-blade. He can feel the thump of his heart, even still, echoing as if lonely within the cavern of his body, beating against lungs and ribs and breastbone – a wild animal, desirous of freedom. 

"No regrets?"

It is everything but simplicity, and James has already thought of the problems – Laura, work, Innocent. The implosion of their friendship into a mushroom cloud, the chain reaction that might destroy them.

It is everything but simplicity, but then there is this, the press of Robbie against his back and the ache where they have been together, two combined to make something more than one. (This is somehow simple.) James thinks about it, thinks that he would not change it for the world, shakes his head. 

There is romance and then there is Romance, of both philosophical and literary grace, with its fine lines darting out into the world. He finds himself now – sated, and somehow without the energy required to brandish a quote or think about the things that the poets would have said – he finds himself now not caring about either. He can feel the thump of Robbie's heart where it is pressed against his spine, the two of them together where they are not joined. 

"No regrets," he says, words making the sentiment real, and he lifts his chin and looks Robbie in the eyes. (It is simpler than James had thought it would be, this feeling.)

*****

If there was a time when James thought that this was born of loneliness (the inexorable drifting march of time pressed upon two solitary figures, the combination of two disparate selves into some sort of alchemical _we_ somehow forced out of the pressing weight of still dark hours and cold beds) if there was such a time, this is not it.

This is The Day After, and though it has capital letters for James, it is much like any day. (The calendar should be rewritten to mark The Day.)

Work – cold cases – the pub after, the telly, the bump of their shoulders together when Robbie shifts in his seat or James rises to bring another round – it is all comfortable. 

James feels for once that he has settled into his skin, that the heartbeat fluttering under his skin belongs to him, that these bones and this skin are _his_. 

This could have come from loneliness but instead it is an extension of the two of them, of the way that they have always been. In a way they have always been together, two selves fused into a _we_ , the two of them facing the world. (This could have come from loneliness but James wanted it before he knew that he was lonely.)

He follows Robbie out to his car, their shadows stretched out before them by the street lights. He settles into the passenger seat, shifting until he is comfortable, elbows and knees tucked in close against his body, cradled by the seat. Robbie brushes a hand against his neck, a soft whisper of a touch, before reaching for the gear shift. 

Without discussion, he drives James to his flat, parks the car, dims the lights. Even in the growing darkness, James can see him. (He thinks – sentimental, foolish, true – that he will be able to see Robbie Lewis wherever he goes.)

James follows him up the stair, waits to hear the clatter of keys dropped into the bowl by the door, waits to be pressed into the wall. Kiss after kiss, and the uncoordinated stumble to the bed spread with its rumpled duvet, and over it – the press of them together, somehow sweeter and dearer than the first time. He mouths kisses along Robbie's collar bone, and cherishes each kiss. 

He follows Robbie down the headlong descent into bliss, clinging to him all the way. He thinks – doesn't ask, doesn't know – that this is as new to Robbie as it is to him, as fraught with meaning, as overwhelming. (To touch and to be touched like this – he thinks that he has never known anything like this before.)

He waits for Robbie to set the example and then follows him, copies him, sometimes surpasses him – for though it is new and overwhelming, it is easy all the same. Each touch calls for another touch and another touch, and at the end – there is nothing as easy as falling, trusting in an easy landing. 

( _For whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge_ …)

*****

James remembers fairy tales, his mother's stories, half-forgotten bits of lore. (Third time's the charm – a phrase from somewhere, he can't remember where.)

The third time is the time that James lets himself start hoping, the time that he touches Robbie first, the time that he is the one who brings them up against a wall. Like this, hard angles and bones pressed against unyielding brick, kisses pressed on yielding flesh, this is beyond words and still, somehow, for the first time, James finds that he needs the words. 

He's kneeling, looking up at Robbie, asking, "Is this all right?"

Robbie laughs, joins him on the floor – until they are kneeling, both of them, leaning together with their foreheads pressed together, the two of them a stable structure. "Of course. Don't be daft." 

It feels as though they are in their own world, their own Eden bounded by this space between them, and James thinks through the haze of the feeling that he wouldn't ask for any world other than this. 

He is overcome, undone by the feeling. ( _Batter my heart, three-personed God_ …)

"Perfect," he says, breathing the word into the space between kisses.

There will be Sunday afternoons spent shopping, bickering over mushrooms in the supermarket – there will be a shared terraced house, Victorian in its splendour and eccentric in its plumbing – there will be nights spent reading together, James's head dropping to rest on Robbie's shoulder as he falls asleep. Perfect, he'd said, and he means it, wants it. 

Robbie's the one who shows him how to do this now – the one who's always shown him – touch and taste and the slow careful descent to the floor, the two of them pressed together heedless of comfort. It is good like this, better every time.

After, they talk, the words trailing off until James is lying there, listening to nothing but Robbie's heartbeat, the echo of his blood pumping – feeling the rise and fall of his chest with every breath. They hadn't needed words before and he isn't sure that they need them – is content, now, to lie like this. All that they have said has been said in the spaces between them, the gap between their bodies growing ever narrower – flesh and skin, their bodies having spoken for them in this silence. 

(Some day he will find the words to tell Robbie that he loves him.)


End file.
